Libraries to be 'new channel' for direct marketing

A scheme to put thousands of advertisements into library books will find borrowers taking home a little more than they had bargained for.

Up to 500,000 inserts a month are due to be handed out by libraries in Essex, Somerset, Bromley, Leeds and Southend.

The plan is being run by the direct marketing company Howse Jackson, whose business development director Mark Jackson said the company was "very proud" of what he described as "a brand new channel" for direct marketing.

"In this day and age you have to work hard to come up with new ideas," he said.

"The inserts are put in the book at the first page as you're handed the book to check it out," he explained. "They're going to be inserted right next to the panel with the return date on it, which means that everyone will look at them at least once."

"We're looking at somewhere between 500,000 and 300,000 a month at the moment," he said, adding that if 300,000 slots were sold a month the participating libraries could hope to see income of around £10,000.

It's a scheme the company is looking to take nationwide over the next few years, a development which dismayed the director of policy at the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Guy Daines.

He said that such a scheme should be operated with "caution" and suggested there would be "numerous practical difficulties, perhaps the most important of which is that a high percentage of people would find it off-putting".

There was also the risk of "inappropriate product placement", he argued. "You'd have to be careful about the types of products being advertised and also the books they're being inserted into - the two might just not mix."

According to Mr Jackson, the scheme has been designed to minimise these problems, with only one sheet being used for each insert, and only one book receiving inserts for each customer.

"We're also very conscious of the kind of offer that's going to go in there," he added. "We wouldn't put things like scratch cards and so on into the books. In most cases it needs to be a fairly respectable, branded offer."

He admitted that it was impossible to "cover [the question of offence] 100%", and suggested that librarians might use their discretion. Clashes would be unlikely, he said, as many of the inserts would be "fairly generic".

"All of the libraries have to approve each insert before it's used," he said.

He was also keen to stress the potential benefits to participating libraries.

"Like any company or organisation," he said, "libraries are under more and more pressure to create budgets for the products they offer. This is a fantastic opportunity to reinvest money to put books on the shelves."

But it's the creeping commercialisation of library services which concerns Mr Daines. Libraries have been providing bookmarks from sponsors "since the 1970s", he said, "but you're free to pick these up or not as you see fit".

"What you have to be extremely careful of is that the commercial advertising you do cannot be seen to affect the selection of the books themselves," he continued.

"Like any other public sector institution finding a new stream of income is incredibly important." However, he claims, there is a risk that advertising could put libraries' place in the community at risk. "Free access and impartiality are at the core of what libraries do," he said, "so any kind of scheme which seems to compromise that position of impartiality and trust has to be looked at very carefully."